Our school system is now out of snow days. We were out of school again Tuesday due to slick roads and this day, which makes our 10th snow day, was taken at the expense of a planned holiday on May 10.
We have a new family that joined our church who recently moved here from Vermont. I said to them Wednesday night, “I bet y’all think we’re crazy missing all this school for hardly any snow.” They laughed and said their kids had missed more school for snow here in Tennessee this year than they’d missed their whole lives back in Vermont. Of course, today we broke 60° and just about all the snow has melted away.
GETTING BACK IN THE SWING. Vicki has had a hard time getting back in the swing of things with all the snow days we've been having, but she has been back to the office some and she has gotten back into Children's Church and Awana on Sundays and Wednesdays.
Speaking of Awana, we have our Grand Prix coming up in a couple of weeks. My hat is off to Jeff Garst. I was supposed to help him make a four lane track for the race, and we got off to a good start over Christmas break, but he's had to finish it by himself over the last few weeks. On top of all that he's been coordinating the production of some 60 cars for all the Awana clubbers. We decided to use cars that conform to RA standards rather than Awana standards so our boys could use them in the upcoming Robertson County Baptist Association's RA Race.
Ben and Nate have also made two more cars here at home to compete in the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. Nate has a really cool looking Batmobile (the design is from the 1989 Batman movie).
THE DISADVANTAGES OF VELCRO. I have mentioned before that as wonderful as Velcro is for shoes, the side effect is that kids today don't learn to tie shoes as early as I did. This came up when we bought Ben some new basketball shoes and he kept asking us to tie them for him. Vicki said, "If you're old enough to play full court you're old enough to tie your own shoes." All this came up one Sunday Pauline was still in the hospital and we were waiting in the lobby while the Jones family were in visiting with Pauline.
Vicki gets all the credit on this because I have tried to show Ben how to do this several times only to frustrate him. She had him tying his shoes within five minutes. Everybody says I tie my shoes weird anyway. Ironically, I looked up tying shoes on the Internet and my method is the suggested way to teach children. This doesn't say much from my teaching ability.
STEALING KISSES. Ben is not an outwardly affectionate person. As a matter of fact, I'm the only one he'll hug on his own accord...and that's usually combined with a flying tackle. Even Vicki does not get special consideration here for being his mom. The funny thing is that somehow they have this little contest going. Vicki has told him she can slip in one kiss a day (it has to be somewhere on the face) and Ben says she can't do it. So far Vicki has come out on top everyday this week. Of course, he acts disgusted, but then the next day he'll taunt her until she pulls it off. It's so funny to see her get him when he least expects it.
Joe
